Current news concerning Oaxaca, Mexico as well as Mark's thoughts, for what they are worth, on the world's most pressing issues of the day.

Monday, June 12, 2006

Who are the boobs, here?

This fits right in with my SEO (Search Engine Optimization) studies. The Washington Post, taking a brief respite from its daily shellacking of Bush, Iraq, US Marines, Bolton, Rice, Rummy, Republicans, organised religion, mom, baseball and apple pie, expounds at length on an udderly preposterous story.

It seems that a professional dancer, a Ms. Alice Alyse, was quite successfuly holding down a $130,000 per annum gig as a dancer in the Twyla Tharp/Billy Joel broadway show, "Movin' Out." Ms. Alyse suffered a toe injury and, during her recuperation period, grew from a C cup to a D cup.

Before her toe injury, Ms. Alyse fit here.

After her toe heeled (heh heh), she required this.

When she returned to work, she got fired for her, er, pulchritudanimity, or, pulchritudinousness, if you prefer. So, like any good red-blooded and corn-fed American lass, she hired a lawyer and sued their, well, pants off, so to speak, to the tune of $100 million. Now, I'm going to excerpt some passages from the article and highlite those passages which I think most pertinent.

When she returned to the show, she needed new bras sewn into her costumes, and for this, she alleges in her 42-page complaint, she was sexually harassed, verbally abused and wrongfully dismissed.

and

And if the dollar amount weren't attention-getting enough, Alyse has hired onetime Washington gadfly Larry Klayman, a notoriously combative attorney who, judging from his record, relishes a scandal. Klayman, founder of the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, became famous for suing the Clinton administration over numerous alleged coverups and conspiracies.

Shortly after Alyse filed suit in March, he (Billy Joel) told the New York Daily News: "Under no circumstances would I ever have anyone fired for having breasts that were too large."

Billy Joel, possibly.

For Klayman, whose hourly rate tops out at $600, the case is something of a populist crusade. He declined to discuss his fee arrangement, but says, "I've never written a complaint that detailed in my whole life." (It's on the Web at Movinoutlawsuit.com.) In the suit, he reconstructs the alleged comments of production stage manager Eric Sprosty when he first saw Alyse outside the wardrobe fitting room after she returned to the show. Such as: "We hired you at a size C and now you're a [expletive] D! . . . You need to lose those boobs now!"

and

"It's a virtue to have bigger breasts on Broadway, in my expert opinion," Klayman observes one balmy evening, over dinner with Alyse at a seaside restaurant called Bongos. It certainly seems to be a virtue to have them in Miami: The city is awash in well-endowed women wearing tight-fitting tank tops and cleavage-baring camisoles.

Yet big breasts cannot truly be said to be a virtue for a dancer, unless her routine includes thigh-high boots and a pole. The Ziegfeldian hourglass shape has flattened out over time. On current stages, in the view of many directors and choreographers, a B cup might be just sexy enough, while a D may be too much. From ballet companies to Broadway, the preferred look is slender, long-stemmed and minimally jiggly.

and

A D cup, according to Robert Stiehm, a musical theater veteran, could commit the major no-no of pulling focus.

"I want to stick up for this girl," said Stiehm, a Maryland ballet and Pilates teacher who had featured roles in "Cats" and "A Chorus Line."

Oh, no! Wait. That's Roberta Stiehm. Never mind. Back to the article.

Bob Fosse "loved to take all body types, even though he's famous for the long-legged American beauty," said Ann Reinking, the famed Fosse exemplar, Broadway star and choreographer. Among his favorites were exquisite movers like Barbara Sharma, whom Reinking described as "a beautiful little dumpling," and Louise Quick, who was "round and voluptuous . . . like a series of circles."

Alyse says she has faced the size issue throughout her dance career, though she was not quite as curvy when she was a ballet dancer. Costume fittings were always crucial, she says, so that her bodice provided adequate coverage. Beyond that, she says, her breasts had never been much of a liability.

and

Asked if he remembered her as curvaceous, he said, with typical bluntness: "Sure. She's stacked."

Alyse says that when she joined the cast of "Movin' Out," she was happy to see that there were other dancers with noticeable breasts.

and

Angelo Cuzalina, a cosmetic surgeon specializing in breast augmentation at Tulsa Surgical Arts, said that once Alyse became injured and stopped dancing, her muscle mass may have decreased while her fatty mass increased, "and that fat could go to her breasts."

When she realized she had to buy bigger bras, "it was kind of a shock to me, and I was a little embarrassed," says Alyse. "I think that was my ballet background. You're self-conscious about that area."

(next day)

Alyse is wearing a pale blue camisole stretched tight over her curves, with blue teardrop earrings to match, and a short, filmy black skirt. Her 5-foot-7 height is accentuated by her pulled-up ballerina posture and wedge-heeled sandals. Under any other circumstances, she'd have a to-die-for figure, but she is given to self-criticism.

At such times, Alyse turns to her mother, who is herself amply equipped, for reassurance. "They put in your head that you have big breasts, which you don't," says Moryns Lewitzke, considering her daughter's chest with pursed lips and shaking her head. "I don't think you do . . .

"She's used to being a ballerina. Now she thinks, 'I got big boobs.' . . . She says that every day: 'Am I going to get big like you?' "

Alyse rolls her eyes and looks away. Mom adds with a shrug: "I say, give thanks to God. A lot of women have to pay for the big breasts."

Asked to sum up her own feelings about her body, Alyse is speechless. "Umm," she says, looking uncertain.